Jessie Diggins is pretty good at these 10km skates. There were three 10-kilometer interval-start skate races held on the World Cup last season. Among these three Diggins was first in Lillehammer, second in Toblach, and third in Les Rousses. There was one such race held at World Championships in Planica in February; if you are reading this website you are likely aware that she won that, too.
Heck, going back to the 2021/2022 World Cup season, Diggins was third in this race in Falun in March 2022, and second in Davos in December 2021. The last time a 10km interval-start skate race was held on the World Cup and Diggins wasn’t on the podium was in Lillehammer in December 2021, the fifth race of the 2021/2022 season. It’s been almost precisely two years.
So in some ways it was not surprising that Diggins won again in Gällivare in the first individual skate race of the 2023/2024 World Cup season earlier Saturday, coursing over two laps of the sinuous 5km track in 24:48.3 to take her first victory of the season, the fifteenth of her career, and the 49th individual podium of her career. But if you dive into the statistics — and I’m sorry, but this is an interval-start race, so I’ve got lots of those and not as much of anything else here — how she won is still surprising.
This is a race time analysis line graph from the FIS website. It does not show a close race, Diggins surging back and forth for the lead and eking out an advantage only over the final few kilometers. It rather shows total domination. Diggins led at every single checkpoint shown here. By 1.9km, she was already over a second up on second-place Ebba Andersson. At 3.9km into the race, the advantage was 9.1 seconds. By halfway, it was over 13 seconds. The gap only grew from there, ballooning to 23.1 seconds by the finish.
By the standards of modern-day World Cup racing, this is somewhere between a laughingstock and a runaway. Jessie Diggins destroyed this field.
How did Diggins do this? Rather than hear me pontificate from my warm study in Anchorage, let’s turn this over to Rosie Brennan (who, by the way, was sixth on Saturday; more on her soon), who was on course starting eight bibs and four minutes behind her teammate. “As always,” Brennan wrote on Instagram, “inspired by @jessiediggins ability to make speed where no one else can.”
This is a diagram of the course, and its elevation profile, as taken from its homologation page on the FIS website. This is no Beitostølen, with its broad turns, nor Davos, with its canonical one long uphill and one long downhill, presenting an extended working downhill (at which Diggins also excels) back to the start. This is more twisting, turning, and punchy, two A-Climbs, to be sure, but also six B-climbs in the mix, several of them in quick succession. It was, in a word, a technical course, and Diggins skied it better than anyone today. By far.
It’s easy for me to write a pre-race article about how Diggins was the favorite, and maybe even easier still to write a post-race recap about how Diggins came in as the favorite, then stepped up and met those lofty expectations. But don’t lose sight of the fact that coming in with expectations is its own sort of pressure, not to mention that coming in as literally the defending world champion in this event is a particularly strong expression of this sort of pressure.
I asked Diggins how she mediated between these two things — how she could take confidence that she is objectively very good at this specific race format, but also how she could use that fact without putting undue pressure on herself.
Here’s Diggins, to Nordic Insights:
“I was joking around that I’m just gunning for a top-18 today.
“I try very hard to not pressure on myself. Especially this year; I’ve found that that is hard for my brain. And so I’ve just been thinking about trying to do the best I can and going out there and having fun and just flowing through this course and going all Formula One on the downhills, and that’s what I was focused on today. I wasn’t focused on results or time or beating anyone else. I was just trying to ski this course as best I could. And that’s when I race well too, is when I’m having fun and just really trying to find the flow out there.”
And here’s Diggins on her sense of history with this venue — as I noted in yesterday’s preview article, the last time she raced here she was on an epochal American women’s relay podium in a breakthrough race — in post-race remarks shared with multiple media outlets:
“That was so fun going through memory lane skiing the course for the first time. When we got here, I had memories of absolutely digging deeper than I had ever dug in my life to that point to try to hang on to Marthe Kristoffersen in the relay. And it was so cool to do that with those girls. It was our first ever relay podium. So this place has a lot of very special memories.
“And I’ve been thinking a lot about my awesome teammates and friends. And they’re like family to me, and we have this awesome girls text chain, and so we’ve been having some fun memories together. And I think it’s so cool to honor our history and all the amazing women who have trailblazed and come before us and continue to cheer us on. Like Liz [Stephen, who skied a skate leg on that 2012 relay] will be here next week with the Trail to Gold coaching thing, and she’ll be in the wax truck helping prepare our skis. And that’s so cool and so full circle. So I’ve been really, really enjoying all of that, and really proud to be part of this team.”
And speaking of this team: Oh, by the way, Rosie Brennan was sixth in this race, which is somehow both an objectively superb result yet also her worst distance result of the young season after a pair of podiums in Ruka last weekend. Brennan hovered around fourth to seventh at most intermediate checkpoints, racing in the middle of a tight-knit field. She ultimately finished tied with Lotta Udnes Weng, down to the tenth of a second (the greatest degree of detail used in interval-start races), for sixth overall. One-tenth of a second slower would have put Brennan in seventh. 1.5 seconds faster would have put her in fifth, and 4.3 seconds faster would have put her in fourth. Close margins out there.
I asked Brennan if she could expand on some of the technique changes that she has made coming into this season, because she is skiing super well and because I am a dork who wants to know more about this. I also asked her if she can access those changes or cues more effectively in interval-start races rather than mass start. (Also, and unrelatedly, happy birthday Rosie! Your present is that you have to answer my emails!)
Here’s Brennan, in case you’ve ever wondered how World Cup winners think about technique, and about the different things that go into moving fast down a race course on a pair of skis:
“I’m not sure that there’s ever just one thing that completely changes your technique. I think it’s just finding cues that kind of speak to you in the moment. And those change — sometimes they change for me every race, and sometimes there’s one that I really stick with for a whole season. But just like something that allows you to find better flow, and for whatever reason, sometimes those are just really fleeting, and they take a long time to get.”
Brennan added that the skis themselves make a difference here, specifically how well she knows them and how well they are fitted to her and her skiing:
“Especially working with Bjørn [USST World Cup ski tech Bjørn Heimdal], my technician, for the last couple of years has been really helpful. And working very closely with Rossignol, we really dialed in skis that I think fit me a lot better and are being prepared really well. And so that also gives me the best chance. So then it’s kind of like when all those things come together, like you have good skis, you find a little flow in your technique, and you’re fit — that generally makes for a good race. I guess I’m just honestly thinking about finding flow out there and like not fighting myself in my skis. And that that tends to be the best version of me and the fastest version of me.”
So can she find this best version of herself in mass start races? Sometimes, but it’s more of a work in progress (says the athlete who was on the podium in the season’s first mass start race).
“Sometimes I definitely struggle, in mass starts, finding my flow when I’m skiing around a bunch of people and worried about what they’re doing. So that’s definitely something that I am working on. And last weekend I made it happen in the end, so I’m trying to hold that in my back pocket as always an option, too.
“That’s what’s cool about this sport, is maybe I’ve been around for a while, but there’s always still more to learn. And that’s really fun and keeps me motivated and is exciting.”
That’s not all. Sophia Laukli was 13th in the race (+1:11.4), a season best for the second weekend in a row. We have a podcast with Laukli coming out soon, in which she speaks quite candidly about how it can be, quote, “exhausting” to show up to race every weekend on the World Cup, particularly as a young athlete still transitioning from contending for the win every weekend in college. So I asked her how that transition is going for her so far this season.
Here’s Laukli, in writing to Nordic Insights:
“So far I’ve been really happy with the start to the season. I think it’s easy to have that mentality when I have had some really good skate races, especially a jump compared to last year. With that being said, I know the season is long so I’m anticipating some times where it again might be exhausting and take more to motivate every weekend.
“However, I think it personally helps to just be aware of the ups and downs throughout the season that will come, and because of that just try to savor the good weekends to make the whole season more manageable/sustainable. Like you said it will be a different year without having a college season to find that easier motivation and confidence in, but I’m pretty excited to navigate a full World Cup season (ideally) by just having a more prepared outlook on it (and some solid initial results to back up the confidence).”
(The line about it “ideally” being a full World Cup season is in reference to the fact that Period 2 start rights are contingent upon an athlete’s results in Period 1, and so on throughout the World Cup season. Laukli is clearly squarely in position at present to continue racing on the World Cup, like it’s not even close, but also no one ever really knows for sure ahead of the season how things will go.)
That is, still, not all. Julia Kern was 18th today (+1:35.8), by far her best distance race of the season to date after a 50th and 26th in Ruka, in that order. (Oh by the way she did make the semis in the sprint and was 8th overall there.)
“This course is super fun, a lot of transitions, a lot of turns,” Kern said in audio shared with multiple media outlets in discussing her reaction to her first World Cup races in Gällivare. “You have to constantly be thinking about the best line and how you want to ski the course. I was thinking about, How would I surf this course, like a little bit of staying relaxed and smooth through the corners and really riding the course like you would ride a wave.”
That is, wait for it, still not all. Novie McCabe was 29th (+2:12.6). I didn’t ask her anything today; that’s entirely on me, and nothing personal. Sorry.
Finally, Alayna Sonnesyn was 40th (+2:59.1). I asked her how she was feeling generally, health-wise, after an untimely head cold to start the season, and more specifically how she had felt on the race course today. Here’s Sonnesyn:
“I’m feeling back to being fully healthy but I think that last two weeks of taking things pretty easy led me to feeling a little flat out there today. I felt strong and smooth but didn’t have much of a well to dig deep into. Hoping to sharpen the edges these next few weeks!
“I was trying to stay super positive going into today and embrace the opportunity of being out there, but I didn’t feel like I had the confidence I wanted going into it. I know it’s still early in the season and I typically race into the season but I’m definitely a little bummed with the way things have started off this season. I’m hoping to sharpen things up for these next few weeks, I know I’ve got it in me to have some outstanding days, just need to carve it out!”
* * *
And that, finally, is all from Gällivare. Racing continues tomorrow (or very late tonight, in Alaska) with the 4 x 7.5km relay. Jessie Diggins leads things off for the U.S. on the classic scramble leg, followed by Rosie Brennan on the second classic leg, then Sophia Laukli for the first skate leg and Julia Kern for the anchor leg. Diggins and Brennan will be 1–2 in both the World Cup overall standings and the relay order when the race begins. Heidi Weng calls Sweden the relay favorite for tomorrow. Go team.
— Gavin Kentch
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